Have you read this book? If not, you should. SC Gwynne tells the story of the war against the Comanche in the western plains, and what a story it is, of ferocious violence, savagery and bravery, in which War Chief Quanah Parker was ultimately defeated by General Ranald Mackenzie.
We're inclined, these days, to decry the Red Indian smackdown, and there's justice in that; how many treaties broken. Still, consider the nature of the adversary:
Seven men were killed in the raid, though that does not begin to describe the horror of what Mackenzie found at the scene... the victims were stripped, scalped and mutilated. Some had been beghaded and others had their brains scooped out. "Their fingers, toes and private parts had been cut off and stuck in their mouths... upon each exposed abdomen had been placed a mass of live coals..."
One man, Samuel Elliot, had been "roasted to a crisp" between two wagon wheels, and on. The Comanche, under Quanah, weren't fooling around, and perhaps we forget their ferocity in penance for our own misdoings. But remember this:
What those heathen savages did to our people moving West, they did to their own people too, to other tribes. Scalping, torture, enslavement, killing children, gang raping and enslaving women, some of whom adopted the lifestyle, not least Quanah's Mother, Cynthia Parker.
After defeat by Mackenzie in 1875 at Palo Duro Canyon, Quanah and his war band were folded into the Rez. He became a friend of Teddy Roosevelt, curiously. And all this happened about 150 years ago, not that that far away, when you think on it.
Read Empire, it's a good book,
LSP
14 comments:
Not sorry over the treatment by the governments. Way too many times the 'natives' got frisky and the governments held back. Way too often the chiefs said they had total control over their people, until their people did something wrong, and then the chiefs would say that they could not control their people because something something.
This is how chiefs acted when faced with issues.
Murder by natives? Meh.
Slavery by natives? Meh.
Rape? Meh.
Theft? Meh.
Funny, the same people who said "We don't own the land, it belongs to everyone" also said, "You have taken our lands from us that we were given by something something (actually, usually due to taking the land by force and killing all their enemy's men and male children and forcibly raping any female over the age of 6-10...)
Yeah. By the time the FedGov and State/Territory governments had enough of the natives' line of garbage, after the American Civil War, the whites had pretty much enough of the natives' bullscat.
Remember, in "Little House on the Prairie," the Engels family is removed from their first homestead by the US Army because it was questionably still 'native land.'
And, of course, the best 4 minutes in "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." Found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVqQosyOpg4
Yeah, Jackson kind of screwed over the Cherokee. But the Cherokee kind of screwed themselves over.
And, well, go look at the Reservations. For the most part, the real evil on those places are caused by... the Tribal Councils in charge of said Reservations. Said Tribal Councils are directly responsible in many tribes for delivering federal 'Injun' monies. They control who is considered a member of the tribes and who isn't. Be on the outs with the Tribal Council and you're screwed. You can lose your share of tribal money, your ability to live on tribal lands, get you and yours retroactively removed from the tribes.
Even today, the Tribal Councils fight wholeheartedly any DNA=based proof of tribal membership. Memberships get 'vetted' through the very tribal councils that parcel out tribal moneys.
Said tribal councils also tend to make life very difficult for tribal members. Openly fighting medical treatments for all sorts of disease, treatments for alcohol and drug abuse.
The Reservations have a much higher rate of rape, incest, alcoholism, drug use, theft, murder than even most inner cities. But the tribal councils fight tooth and claw to keep any 'whites' away from the reservations.
Don't care. Did it to themselves for the most part. The upswelling against the natives that resulted in the reservation system was, in typical western European fashion, kind of "Oh, you all f'd up one too many times, so all y'all are going to pay. After all, all y'all look alike. that's what you say to us."
@Beans...the older I get past my K-12 formal education, and having resided "out West" since 1984, the more I realize the truth in everything you stated. Incidentally, like him or not, Taylor Sheridan knows his subject matter -- Wind River speaks to some of what you've pointed out. The Last of the Dogmen (one of our perennial favorites to re-watch) also speaks to this subject.
History class never taught us the actual truth, and there is enough blame to go around to cover both sides...human nature, whatever the race, hasn't changed much in millennia. I just wish historians would be honest instead of telling us a bunch of pap to CYA..most of us are big people, we can handle it.
Paul, what you said was evident to me by 5th grade.
In the 4th grade, we had decent world history textbooks that dealt with the rise of the Greek democracy states, dealing with the good and the bad, and comparing to the Persian empire.
Come 5th grade, our history textbook (same as 4th grade, just supposedly the next section past the Greeks) was changed out to a touchy-feely socialist piece of carp.
Quite evident that the Soviet Union won by gaining control of our education system and our media.
Socialists can and will screw everything up.
Don't even get me started on the American Civil War for Southern Independence and Northern Aggression. You know, the war that partially was due to slavery but more due to the North's economic control over the South, just like England's economic control over the Colonies led to the Revolution. Same basic issues. The North, like England, wanted to be in control of all manufacturing. The South, like the Colonies, wanted to have the ability to manufacture. The North, like England, wanted control of all resources in the South, or the Colonies. The North, like England, wanted all resources sold to other countries to go through them first.
Yeah... Nice one. Then there's the causes behind WWI and who got what allies. We should have fought alongside the Kaiser...
Not going on about how the school system loved FDR and how FDR locked the Japanese into having to fight us. And so fortha nd so on.
Rat Bastards.
read "The Commanche Empire" by Pekka Hamalainen. The Comanches were the first of the tribes to assimilate the use of horses and firearms. These they got first from the Spanish and later the French. They roamed a vast area of the now United States. They sold many others into slavery to the Spanish and French. It is an informative read.
My only problem with Native Americans is some liberal or modern types talk about how wonderful the Natives were. Many were violent and cruel beyond imagination. Read about St Isaac Jogues and the North American Martyrs, or Captive Among the Indians by Horace Kephart. The latter is first-hand accounts of early settlers taken in the Massachusetts and New York areas.
I agree the US treated many tribes badly, tricked them, massacred many.
Southern NH
Every Texas skoolchild knows, or anyway used to be taught, dunno what they do now, that the Commanch went on raids down to Mexico every year, but didn't have to go near as far as Mexico when the settlers moved into that former wasteland that the Commanch had to transit to get to the Mexicans. And when asked by the government negotiators to stop, said, essentially, why should we? This is how we make our living, and we've made our living like that for many centuries and see no good reason to stop, and in fact rather enjoy it. Another version of the old saying, if God had not wanted them sheared, he would not have made them sheep. Quannah Parker's mother Cynthia was herself carried off during one of those raids. When found and returned to her family, she refused to be forcibly civilized. There were many remarkable things about Quannah Parker, but perhaps the most remarkable was that he saw what was coming and made the White Man's laws work for him, and not the other way around.
As far as the Yankee war machine, it abandoned the Texas frontier at the start of the war so the Confederacy in the form of the State of Texas formed its own militia to protect the citizenry from Indian depredations, not successfully in all cases. One of them was Charlie Goodnight. Mr. Goodnight and his partner Oliver Loving were the alleged inspiration for that despicable Larry McMurtry's hideous book Lonesome Dove, notable for making a mockery of the real lives of Goodnight and Loving, which all in all were a hell of a lot more interesting and heroic than that sorry-assed McMurtry had the intellect, or lack thereof, to conceive.
Finally: If you're ever in the Texas Panhandle, not far east of Amarillo and easy to get to off Interstate 40, you will find what's left of the small town of Goodnight where exists a dandy little museum and Mr. Goodnight's house, which is available to tour. You can also visit the nearby Goodnight cemetery where the Goodnight family plot is circled by chain link fence and read the inscription on the monument to Goodnight and his wife erected by his fellow citizens of the Plains. Cowfolk still visit and tie their bandanas and gimme hats into the fencing. It is not a bad way to be remembered, when you think about it.
Beans, the Indians have been described as "low-barbarians."
There's clearly truth in that and their savagery must've appalled, rightly, the westward movement of our people.
Some say, too, that human sacrifice wasn't indigenous to south of the border but was ubiquitous.
Maybe so. Whatever the case, the Comanche were ferocious and give us, I'd say, a window into our prehistoric past.
Outstanding horsemen, though.
Dear Paul & Beans,
I was amazed, and shocked, when I moved to the States in '97 and discovered my step-daughter wasn't taught history in public school, but something called "social studies." Let me walk that back, I wasn't just amazed, I was dumbfounded. Like... wow.
Well things haven't gotten any better, have they.
Best,
LSP
Cherokee were equally violent in the 1700s. Killed some of my ancestors.
Mine too, sd, tho some of them were Cherokee.
I refuse to accept the greatness of any culture or peoples that haven't embraced the concept of THE WHEEL.
Great civilization, great peoples? Where's the wheel? If you don't have the wheel, then you aren't great.
Even the Pacific Islanders of Micronesia and Polynesia embraced the concept of rollers, which is a very low-low-low tech version of THE WHEEL.
Our 'Native Americans'/'First Nations'? They did invent dragging sticks on the ground with stuff on them. But actually, you know, use a wheel? Nope.
As for human sacrifice, it was widely practiced amongst and between the natives of North America. From actual ritual sacrifice, to child sacrifice in lean times, to elder sacrifice, it was wisespread amongt all the peoples. All of them.
Like that whole 'elders will take themselves off to die when it's their time' bullscat. All the natives, even the Moundbuilders, were migratory. Either chasing herds, chasing seasons or because they were so horrible to the area they were living in that they had to leave and let the area recover for years or decades, they were migratory. No big cities like in Central and South America.
Even the Pueblos and Cliff-dwellers migrated as they destroyed the environment.
So, while migrating, old and sick people were left behind. Oftentimes after being stripped naked or darned close to naked with anything useful being taken from them.
Imagine you and your family, leaving where you are. You strip grandma down to her knickers and leave her by the side of the road. Horrible? That's the Native American/First People's way.
Savage. Savage describes them perfectly.
Yes, once they rediscovered horses, the horse culture took over in the West. Not nearly as great at the Mongols and other Steppe Nomads, but pretty good. For light cavalry. Couldn't stand up to heavy cavalry like Europe had up to the 1900's.
And, contrary to movies and books, most US Cavalry were more dragoons, horse-infantry. Able to fight from horse, but usually at the first sign of contact unhorsed and forted up from the ground. Using the horses as light cav at the most, for skirmishing and routing, but not like European light cavalry.
Or, at least, that's my take on it.
We should have imported Mongols to take care of our Native issues...
That's interesting, Beans, I was thinking Mongols too. Still, the Comanche were a formidable force and we met it with Hays' Rangers, and beat them.
Then, some 10 or 20 years later, we apparently lost the knowledge/skill of Hays' crew and had to reinvent it. Huh.
As for the wheel? Not within the ken of low-barbarians. They could ride though.
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